


Above Control

by TrulyCertain



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games), Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Genre: Angst, Canon Temporary Character Death, Character Study, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-19 23:47:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14883582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrulyCertain/pseuds/TrulyCertain
Summary: She wonders when they broke like this.Megan, Adam, and difficult meetings.





	Above Control

Sometimes she dreams she had a chance to say goodbye. She kneels there in the burning wreckage of her lab, and she does. They're more like nightmares, those dreams, when she knows that this is her fault. Her work is what killed him.  _I love you. I'm sorry._  They ring hollow when she can taste copper on his lips and there's liquid all over her hands, cooling fast. Sometimes he holds on long enough to forgive her. Usually he doesn't, and she watches him choke on his own blood until the light goes out of his eyes and she's pulled away.  
  
So she loved him. It doesn't matter now. It didn't then, either - she did something he'd have hated her for, and anyway, he left her. But she still hoped. Those things were more surmountable than death. If she'd just gone quietly... Hugh didn't know what they'd do, the mercenaries. He would have stopped it.  
  
Adam's dead, and it's her fault. The least she can do is not stop the work, so it isn't in vain. He'd want to help people. He always did.  
  
The worst dreams are the ones where he comes back.   
  
She's believed in augmentation since she knew it was a possibility. She loves her work and what it can do, she knows it can help people, she has enough friends who have benefited - But there's Jaron, and the others, who barely act like they're people. And something David said a long time ago, when they'd been turning over the slides, still haunts her -  _I bet you could augment every damn piece of him and he'd make it through. Take to it, even. He's made for it. Someone like that could be... more than either of us. More than any of us._  
  
She believes in augmentation. But the thing that comes to her and says,  _Hey, Meg. Long time no see_  is not human. Cold metal hands touch her face, wrong and beautiful, and gently make her look at him.  _I've missed you._  
  
The worst thing is, she still kisses him.

 

 

 

She’s still coughing when she stumbles out of the lab, trying to see through gas, and one of the cops is helping her out. She thinks he’s part of the team that carried Bill out after he built… God. After he built that gas bomb.

The officer’s got an arm around her waist, firm but gentle, and he’s… calm. At least, he looks it; she can’t see much of his face under the helmet. But he’s not shaking, and he’s steady. He has been this whole time, while they’ve wrestled their way through the smoke and gas, pulling people out and passing them to other officers. She thinks he’s wearing goggles, maybe night-vision ones. It’s dim in here.

She says, “Have you had the antidote?”

He tenses, distracted with getting them out of here, and says, “Huh?” He has a rough voice, and she can’t tell whether that’s because he got caught with the gas too or it’s just how he is.

She takes his arm, presses her fingers against padded tactical gear to get him to _listen_. “Have _you_ had the antidote? I know the others have, but you...” She trails off, coughing.

“I…” He sounds surprised, for a moment. “We should concentrate on getting you out of here.”

After they’re out, blinking in sterile white light, and she can finally breathe again – her dose is starting to take effect – she hears him inhale in something like relief.

She presses a hand to his chest, and he stumbles to a stop. It’s stranger, more incongruous here, the helmeted guy in head-to-toe black sharp against clinical white walls. “What - ?”

“ _Antidote._ Have you had it?”

“I wasn’t the priority.”

“Just let me – please. If you got me out of there and then you _died,_ I don’t know what I’d...”

She hears him sigh. He seems to think it over. “You got enough for everyone else?”

“Of course, I – when I synthesised it - “

“Yeah.” A low, rough exhale that might be a laugh. “That was pretty impressive.”

She feels herself go pink. “The materials – half of it was made already, I just had to – it doesn’t matter. Let me help you. _Please.”_

He nods, and then they stumble over to a nearby bench. He finally lets go of her, and slumps to sit on it. She can see the exhaustion now. He looks like he might be in pain. There are the low sounds of velcro as he takes off his glove, shrugs away his jacket, until he’s in a shirt and tacvest.

She sits next to him, unlocks her suitcase.

“Give me a second.” His voice is quiet, and he pulls off the helmet, sets aside the goggles. She sees sweat-spiked dark hair and gets a brief glimpse of him blinking in the brightness, then he ducks his head to roll up his sleeve.

She’s preparing a dose, testing the syringe, when she looks up, into long-lashed blue eyes. He looks away, back to the syringe, watching her work, still steady and intent. She thinks that she could probably injure herself on those cheekbones, and then wants to laugh or cringe at how inappropriate the thought is. Just the adrenaline. Besides, he looks tired, and he clearly needs a shave. Even so, he’s… well. Not the time.

She delivers the dose, barely hearing his hiss of pain, and then takes her hand away from warm, pale skin. “There. You’re a lot less likely to die now.”

He’s looking at his arm, testing it. He looks up and meets her eyes. Smiles, small but there. “Yeah. I… thanks.” He mutters as he rolls down his sleeve, “I was about to try out for a promotion.”

She puts away the antidote and slumps back against the wall. “And after this… I _have_ to get another job.”

A small sound, gravelly - she’s beginning to think he always is – and she realises it’s a laugh. He sits back, too, looking up and sighing. “Sounds like a good idea.”

“Thank you. For… for getting me out of there. Officer…?”

“Jensen.” He’s different when he smiles. “Adam Jensen.”

 

 

 

There are sounds outside, and at first she thinks it’s her imagination. Sometimes, when she’s just waking up and the room’s too dark to see the whiteness of the new office, she thinks she hears them coming for her again. The others being killed.

But no. There’s a shout, and then – a thud.

It’s happening. And it’s close.

She crosses the room quickly, as quietly as she can, and pulls up the camera in the corridor outside. She has to know -

The first thing she sees is a whirl of black.

There’s an aug in tacgear, and the way he moves – fast, impossibly fast, she’d thought the Quiksilver wasn’t in circulation yet but his reflexes are… insane… Somewhere underneath the enhancements, he has that same long-legged grace and precision she used to see in Adam.

She guesses she’s seeing him round every corner now. She barely even saw him fight, anyway; training, sometimes, but that wasn’t this easy brutality. He pulled his punches.

The aug slams a man’s head against a wall and keeps moving, steady, inexorable. She’d wonder at the lack of a helmet, but… he acts like he doesn’t need it. Maybe he doesn’t. They move and he moves faster, always gone a half-second before they can hit him. He takes on three of them at a time, moves like he was made for it – which, she supposes, he was.

This was never why she started developing the technology. This was never what she wanted. David just made it sound so easy, focused on helping people… She forgot that sometimes he thought “helping people” was turning them into weapons.

He turns his head, and she sees the shine of eyeshields. Sees the scarred face underneath.

She takes a step back before she can stop herself. Even just seeing it on security footage is enough.

She didn’t think she’d started hallucinating. She thought the sleep deprivation wasn’t getting to her that badly. But whoever it is, there’s a breach, definitely a breach… She shakes, and starts wondering what she can do, they didn’t give her any access to the defences -

She’s still reeling when she hears the door hiss open, and the low, almost inaudible whirr of servos. “Jaron, is that you?” she asks, because suddenly, desperately, she hopes…

“Not exactly.”

The augs shine in the light as he steps forward. Close up, there’s a tired slump to his shoulders, and there’s blood on the black of his arms… his arms, and black and gold hands, and she can tell from his gait there must be leg augs, too. There’s a scar – no, not a scar, a maker’s mark at his forehead, where the shot - God, they must have had to rebuild him from -

He’s real. Oh God, he’s real.

And he’s hurt. She moves, wanting to help. Or wanting to touch him and make sure this isn’t another of those dreams, that he isn’t -

He flinches from her. She’s still trying to think when he’s accusing her, stalking forwards. She hates that that’s how she knows. Of course this is real, because he’s angry. He’s Adam.

“Are you a part of this?” he demands, rage in his voice but something cracking, hurt underneath. He sounds like he did in their last argument before he left, but… worse. There’s deeper hurt.

The fact he can even ask tells her enough. She wonders when they broke like this. She wonders if he’s right.

She tries to explain, she has to. She grabs for his hand and folds her fingers round metal ones. They’re warm.

For a moment the shields retract, and under them there are wide, pained eyes she knows better than her own. They may be augmented, but the way he looks at her… it’s the same. He has new scars, and he looks tired, so tired, but under it all is hope.

He’s not the thing from her dreams. He’s more human than that, more real. Better. He looks… good, like he was made for this, like he’s never been anything else, even though she remembers gentle, scarred hands and blue eyes. They feel less real now. The way he moves, the way he speaks - this, still, is him, and she thinks that might be what breaks her.

She sees the moment she loses him. When she mentions David – it’s always David, it always was – and then she has to explain.

The shields snap back into place. She watches him step back as he talks about the DNA, and if he didn’t have the reflex enhancements, she wonders if he’d be unsteady on his feet. He retreats, curling in on himself, the way he always used to when there was nothing left to argue over. Like his worst fears have been confirmed, every one of them.

She feels the space between them like a wound. Even when the broadcast begins, he realises he’s leaning closer to her and shifts away, tensing -

And then there’s no more time to worry about that, because the world is ending.

 

 

 

The last time Megan sees him, he's standing in the labs, combing through files that should be confidential. Once they might have had someone guarding those, but barely anyone's here; SI is still and quiet, and there are only a few guards at the main doors. Aside from vandalism, they haven't had many break-ins. They probably think anything of value's already gone. They're not wrong. Besides, they probably didn't want to stop their old boss and ask what he was doing here.  
  
SI has mostly gone dark. Even here, and once the lights were on in R&D almost constantly. Between neural augs, caffeine and scientific mania, the team often just.. wouldn't sleep. The darkness was probably why she didn't know he was here. Maybe he didn't want to be seen.  
  
He's a patch of darkness on his own, black coat and black hair, an extra shadow even in the dimness. That could almost be the same as before - he was always like this at work, even his dress sense said  _security_ , and she told him jokingly to lighten up, sometimes - but mechanical hands glint in the half-light, fast and deliberate as he flicks through the files. SI does good work; she's never seen a design quite like them. She wonders if David had personal input.  
  
She considers stepping back, pretending she was never here - but he looks over his shoulder.   
  
There's the glint of heavy-duty eyeshields, and she wonders if he's blinking, wide-eyed behind them, the way he was when he found her in the compound. She wouldn't know. Once, she was one of the only people who could read him when he shut down and shied away like this. Now he can hide in a whole different way. He says, in a voice like gravel, "Megan." He sounds tired and resigned, and like he's been kicked somewhere soft.  
  
"Adam," she says, trying for neutral. It comes out too bright, brittle. She wants to sound as if they're standing anywhere but here. As if they're different people, maybe. "I... just came to get my things."  
  
He nods and goes back to his search, but his shoulders are tense.  
  
She walks past him, starting the journey to her office, listening to the near-silence. Then the sounds of paper and card stop, and she hears him slide out one file. She knows exactly which one it is.  
  
She looks back, and finds he's already watching her. She stops, then, heart in her throat.  
  
He tucks his file under his arm. She hears canvas, and realises that he has a new coat. A new lot of things. She heard something about him being dragged out of Panchea, some clinic in Alaska. Then something about counter-terrorism. Of course he went back to policing, or something close. She didn't have much time to pay attention when she was trying to get herself out of a sinking ship before David took them all down with him, accepting defeat with as much grace as ever. Or maybe it was just that she had to put it aside. She'd lost him too many times.  
  
Adam says, "You know, you could just have asked me."  
  
"No, I couldn't. I know what you thought of David, of this company. What you  _still_  think."  
  
"I always respected your work. Was a time I thought you wanted to save the world." He says that with the smallest half-smile, barely there in the low light, and bitter. Someone else might have missed it, but she slept next to him for years. "I just wish your work could've respected me."  
  
"You say that now. You always say these things afterwards. You were stubborn, you wouldn't  _listen_... About so many things. What was I meant to do, leave millions to suffer?"  
  
He steps into the light of a window. " _Ask me._  That was what you were supposed to do. I would've done anything for you. Anything."  
  
"I know. But when you set a line, you stick to it... Mexicantown, Adam."  
  
"That wasn't the same thing."  
  
"It's never the same thing. And then maybe, months later, when an opportunity's gone, you admit you might have been too stubborn. But by then the study's already shut down for lack of funding, or you've already walked out on me. Because everyone else always has to change for you. You can't ever have been wrong."  
  
Now he tenses, like that hurt. Good, she thinks, even as something in her feels guilty.  
  
She says, before she can stop herself, "Why can't you  _see?_  Sometimes there isn't a choice."  
  
"There's always a choice." His voice is low, with that same pain. "If I'd known, I could have  _done_  something. Maybe Sarif wouldn't have - " He stops, sharply.  
  
"Wouldn't have what?" Her eyes fall to the marks on his forehead, the things denoting artificial skin. She remembers Jaron holding a gun to his head and firing. Here, now, it flares white behind her eyelids every time she blinks. Even without the bankruptcy, there's a reason she could never quite go back to her old labs. "He saved you."  
  
He raises one of those dark mechanical hands, and looks at it. "He made me  _this._ " He sounds like the words were dragged out of him.  
  
"I thought you weren't anti-augmentation.” It sounds like she’s accusing him. She thinks she is. “I always thought you seemed uncomfortable with it all, but..."  
  
"This isn't about the damn  _principle._  Most of them made the  _choice._  I woke up like..." He ducks his head. "I... Sorry." He clears his throat, and she can tell he's fishing for something to say. She used to find it endearing when he got flustered. Human. He says eventually, "How's Cassandra?"  
  
"Mom's doing fine. She asks about you sometimes, you know."  
  
He nods, exhales. "Yeah." The eyeshields retracted at some point, and his eyes have the faintest glow to them, almost imperceptible. He's grown the beard further, but his face is... almost the same, other than the shield-ports. Still handsome, still tired. When he looks at her, even with augmented eyes... that's the same, too. Still. She knows why he wears the shields; his eyes have the world in them.  
  
She misses them. Misses strong, calloused hands and the way he used to smile, the look in his eyes no-one else got to see. She wonders when this became beyond repair.  
  
Her voice is quiet, and she doesn't know why she says it. "When they carried me out, I had your blood on my shoes. The last time I let you be involved in my work, the last time I let you know anything... that's what happened. And then I led you to Panchea." She swallows. "I have to go."  
  
"Megan -  _Please._ "  
  
She's already turning and walking upstairs. She knows he could catch her easily, but he's Adam, so she also knows he won't.  
  
She breathes, her back against the door. She stays there, listening to his footsteps fade.   
  
She thinks of the empty place in the filing cabinet.  
  
They have spares. He might have taken the file in David's office and wiped the digital copies, if he remembered, but most likely... they have spares. Many, many spares.   
  
Maybe he just wanted something for himself.


End file.
